playing with photoshop

I'm bored today so I'm learning how to better use Photoshop...kind of fun....

For this one, I made a slight blur in the background to make Carter stand out more.

For this one, I took a picture of Emma with an ugly background, and "extracted" her and then put her on this paper I had. I could have also put her in some cool scenic background but I didn't have any. This is handy for gifts, I could do those "put yourself on a magazine cover" pictures. As a matter of fact, I might go play with that next.
And here, I reeeeeally blurred the background to focus on Carter.....maybe a little too much blur. Still fun.

Photo Op

One day last week, my mom called and asked if I wanted to take Carter to Minnetrista to take some pictures. We had done that with Emma before and it is such a beautiful place to take pictures.

This picture should be last but I can't get it to go down...anyway, this was after Carter decided to get into the little pond and had a dirty butt. My mom just thought it was hilarious...him walking after Emma and I with his dirty little touchie!
I will treasure these for years to come....of course my mom just sees the wrinkles!

Smelling flowers!

They were even color coordinated!!!
Had to get Emma in a shot too!

my attempt at photography!

We had a beautiful sunny day today and I'd been wanting to go outside and play around a little with my camera! I tried a little bit of everything!

Emma picked this flower for me!
Morgan & Carter checking out the bubble blower (thank you cropping tool)

Morgan loves her baby brother!! She can be mad at the world but if Carter comes around, she snaps right out of it!

I'm really looking forward to those front teeth being all the way in!!!!

We borrowed our neighbor's yard for this one.

I had never used my flower/macro setting on my camera. I tried focusing in and then moving to get the flower in focus and blur the background!

Same thing here....again borrowing neighbor's yard!

Neighbor's again! I like how the center of this flower almost looks like a heart!

I love those eyes!!!!!!

Neighbor's yard again....I thought this one would look neat framed in my kitchen where I have cherries on my dishes (even though these aren't technically cherries!)

My big boy looking soooo old!

Slight variation...

He looks so sad here!

His hair looked so red here with the sun shining on it!

I love this one!!

Had to zoom in and get those looooong eyelashes!

I think this one might be my favorite of all the ones I took today!

I love this one too and I was so torn because her eyes were soooo blue, but the rest of the picture looked better in black and white.

Pictures!

Here are the pictures we got on New Year's Day of the 4 grandchildren of Chris' parents (who they call Nana and Papa) Hannah is Chris' sister's daughter and she is 4 (2 months and 24 days younger than Emma) Not too bad for an outing that only took about 20 minutes total!

I've been tagged!

OK, I've been tagged by my friend Tia and this one sounds fun! Who doesn't love to show off pictures!?!? (although its been very difficult to narrow it down to only 5 so I have an honorable mention as well!!!!)

The game is: Your top 5 pics of 2008 and why. Does it bring back a good memory? Do you look smokin' in it? Any pic and any reason works, but you can only choose 5. Sound fun? I hope so. See end of post for taggees.


Here they are in no particular order....

This one I just think looks so adorable and I love the way the coloring is in the background. It was such a perfectly sunny fall day and I was playing around with my new camera. I've had several people even ask if it was professionally taken! So cute!

This picture of Morgan and Emma was actually the first picture that popped in my head as my favorite picture of the whole year. This was on Morgan's first day of school and Emma woke up just in time to see Morgan get on the bus. I was standing out in the road to take a picture of Morgan when Emma ran out and hugged her and kissed her. I didn't even prompt them. I get this out and look at it on the days when they are separated in their rooms for the 14th time for fighting with each other.

This one is my favorite picture from our trip to Valencia, Spain, and our first trip overseas. It was such an exciting trip and a fun time and a neat experience. I missed the kids terribly, but it was worth it. Such an amazing trip.

This one I love for 2 reasons, I love the way Carter and my mom are looking at each other with such love...but I also love it because being on the boat is my Mom's most absolute favorite place to be in the world (maybe 2nd to being on the jetski along side the boat) and for my kids to share that love with my mom is so priceless. (I also grew up on a boat and love it as well....but probably not as much as my mom!)

This one still cracks me up to this day. This was at the dentist's office on Emma's first trip to the dentist back in January. She was less than thrilled to be there. I think the photo speaks for itself.

This one is my favorite because, really....kartwheels on the beach in Florida at sunset? Does it need an explanation?!?!

So there you have it! Such fun! I will now tag Lee, biz, Kristen, and Kari!

picture pages, picture pages

OK, so I'm on a picture kick lately. I really need to take some photography classes because I just love taking pictures and especially would like to learn all the cool features on our cool new(ish) camera. Anyway, here are some fun pictures that I thought were cute from our excursion to the playground just now! We had lots of fun!